


Daylight Breaks

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amnesia, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-20 00:49:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1490563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>He knows two things without being told. There is a war. He is a soldier.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daylight Breaks

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Iulia for encouraging and approving this!

He knows two things without being told. There is a war. He is a soldier.

He receives orders, which is a soldier's place in a war. He understands the orders he receives. He understands the words spoken to him, even when they sound different from the words inside his own head. He knows how he will accomplish his mission. 

He understands that the orders he is given could not be given to other soldiers. Only him. He is different. He works alone. 

He has a sense, a shadow-image in his mind, of another kind of soldier who would not be given such orders. A soldier like that wears a uniform and operates in daylight. A soldier like that must be protected by soldiers like himself, who will do what must be done in the dark.

He cannot picture the face or the uniform of the daylight soldier, but he knows one must exist--many, because daylight soldiers fight in armies, not alone like him. He completes his mission because it is his mission, but he also knows, down inside, that the mission is good and necessary because it protects the daylight soldier. He will always protect the daylight soldier, who is everything that he is not. 

The daylight soldier is worth protecting.

* * *

There is a war. He is a soldier. 

His mission is to kill a certain man who means to destroy the world (and destroying the world will cost the lives of all the daylight soldiers). He must kill those who would aid the man. He must protect a certain place from the man. He knows how to accomplish these things. He will accomplish these things. He will not fail in his mission. He will kill the man.

The man is a challenge; the man matches his own speed and durability, and worse the man seeks to distract him. The man calls him _Bucky_. The man asks him not to do this. But the man must be stopped, and the soldier will not fail in his mission. Even when he has fallen the soldier seeks to execute his mission, firing again and again as the awareness creeps in that this mission could end in his own death. He could fail.

He has to complete his mission. He knows nothing else.

The man comes down to him even as the helicarrier--all the world--is crashing around them. The man lifts a girder so that the soldier can free himself.

 _Your name is James Buchanan Barnes_ , the man insists. _You're my friend._

"You're--my--mission--" the soldier insists, and though he knows it's too late, though the world is already burning--though he knows a dozen more efficient ways to kill the man and salvage that much of his mission--he strikes that face again and again to silence those words. He cannot blot them out.

No one has ever told him his name before. No one has ever called him friend. 

The man falls, and the soldier remembers falling. He remembers looking up into a face he knows. He remembers that name-- _Bucky_ \--screamed across the cold void as he fell. 

He remembers the daylight soldier reaching out for his hand.

He dives.

* * *

He stands a while longer after he's pulled the daylight soldier from the water. The daylight soldier is breathing, healing almost before his eyes, and he knows the man will stay saved now that he has been brought ashore. 

He knows he will not complete his mission. 

_Bucky_ , the daylight soldier called him. _My friend_.

The words were not orders. They were not a mission. They were something else; they were the truth. He cannot remember anyone ever telling him the truth before.

 _Bucky_ , he thinks. _Friend_. 

He knows there's much more he doesn't know. Bucky turns and walks away, to begin his search.


End file.
